Making the Most of One's Mind

Front matter

By John Adams, M.A., B.Sc., LL.D. Professor of Education in the University of London

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Copyright, 1915, by George H. Doran Company

Taking Oneself in Hand

Among the Romans of the old days when a boy had finished his education, and was regarded as fit to enter upon the responsibilities of life, he cast aside the scarlet-bordered gown that boys then wore, discarded the disc of gold, silver, or leather that hung from his neck, and put on the plain black gown, the toga virilis, that was worn by men. In those days this entrance upon manhood was taken seriously, and was accompanied by a certain amount of ceremony. The boy was led to feel that his new estate made heavy demands upon him. No doubt it meant the removal of certain restraints. Indeed, the manly gown was sometimes called the toga liberior, the gown of greater freedom. But it also implied the imposition of new responsibilities. Orig- inally the donning of the toga virilis meant the liability to military service, for at first the gown was not assumed till the completion of the seventeenth year. Later in the history of Rome it was assumed at an earlier age. Indeed, the age varied considerably, but it may be safely said that the scarlet-bordered robe was not discarded before the fourteenth birthday, nor retained much beyond the sixteenth.

This variation is natural, for it is not in human nature to become a responsible person at any definite age fixed beforehand. Boys develop at different rates: some are ready at fourteen for the manly gown, while others might fittingly retain the scarlet border till well over twenty. After all, the gown was only a symbol. What it signified was that the boy had taken over his life into his own hands. He was henceforth to be, as the saying runs, "his own master," though, as a matter of fact, he was less free from outward restraint than our modern boys.

We have no ceremony when we don our first coat with tails. In truth, we greatly prefer that no notice should be taken of the innovation, that our friends, in fact, should be considerate enough to pretend that we had been dressed in that way all along. Indeed, our gradual and unostentatious adoption of the garb of manhood represents more truly than the Roman method the process of coming to what are called years of discretion. No doubt there comes a time in most lives when the person is aware that he takes himself in hand, when he assumes the responsibility for the ordering of his own life. But in many cases the person cannot name any particular time at which the act could be said to have been performed, and we know that, after all, the assumption of the manly gown symbolizes only the completion of a process that has been going on for a long time.

This process is a very interesting one and may be called, in a general way, reflection. It implies the turning back of the mind upon itself. We are familiar with those verbs that are called reflexive. Their characteristic is that the action begun by the subject returns back upon that subject. The subject and the object of these verbs are one. If I wash myself, there is only one person occupied in the process. The I that washes is the same as the myself that is washed. It is true that in this case it may be said that one part of the self, say the hands, washes another part of the self, say the face. But when we pass from physical actions this separation cannot be made. When I say I blame myself, it is not one part of me that blames another. It would appear that the whole of me blames the whole of me. When Cranmer, at the stake, thrust his right hand first into the flames because it had signed the document of which he was ashamed, we feel that there is something wrong with the implied judgment. We cannot separate the responsibility on a physical basis. The whole Cranmer was at fault.

Yet there is a genuine difficulty implied in all reflexive action. Children can be greatly puzzled by such a sentence as "Says I to myself." Are there two persons, or only one? How can a conversation be carried on with only one person present? Even grown-up people have to recognize two aspects of the self. I as speaker say something to myself as hearer. There is only one self, but it is acting in two different ways. In one respect it is active, in another it is passive.

Now, at very early stages of life the child does not quite realize the extent of his "self." He will speak of himself in the third person. "Johnny wants a ride in Johnny's coach." By and by he begins to perceive that the Johnny he is talking about is different from every other Johnny. He has more interest in this particular Johnny than in all the remaining Johnnies in the world. He begins to realize that this Johnny who has the coach and other attractive things is a specially interesting person on his own account, apart from the things he possesses. When a child begins to pay special attention to this strange Johnny and to compare him with other children, he has reached the beginning of the conception of self. But there are here obviously two aspects of the self: the self that examines and the self that is examined. These two aspects are given. different names. The examining self is called the subjective self, and the self examined is called the objective. When the subjective self appears for the first time it finds the objective self already existing. Johnny has had many rides in his coach before he begins to turn back upon himself and find out what sort of person he is. Thus it would appear that the objective self precedes the subjective, but all that this means is that at a certain stage the self "comes to itself," or realizes the meaning of this reflexive process that is implied in selfhood.

All these considerations are of great importance to those who wish to take themselves in hand and make the most of themselves. If the subjective self, when it takes stock of the objective, is not satisfied with what it finds, it may set about dealing with that objective self in order to improve it. This is the beginning of real personal education. It is true that a schoolboy may have been at school and therefore undergoing a certain kind of education long before he realizes the two aspects of the self. But his genuine personal education does not begin till he himself takes a hand in it, with some appreciation of what it all means. Education is a process in which there are always two poles, an active and a passive. At school the teacher is obviously at the active pole, the pupil at the passive. The teacher is said to educate, the pupil to be educated. Though the pupil is said to be passive, it does not mean that he is necessarily idle, or that he does nothing. In the two words employer and employee we have a similar distinction. So far as employing is concerned, the employer is active and the employee is passive, though so far as work is concerned, the employer may sit in an office and do very little, while the employee may be carting coals all day. So far as education is concerned, the teacher is active and may be called the educator, the pupil is passive and might be called the educatee, but is better named the educand. With an ordinary thoughtless schoolboy who just does his daily work as prescribed by the teacher, we have a case in which the teacher is all educator, and the pupil all educand. But wherever we find a pupil who takes an intelligent interest in his education, that is, who not only does his daily tasks but understands why he has to do them, we have a case in which the pupil is, to some extent, an educator as well as an educand.

In the lower classes at school the pupils are almost entirely educands. In the upper classes the better pupils gradually begin to take a hand in their own education, and become more and more educators of themselves. The progress of a really good pupil through a school is a process of gradually eliminating the need for an external educator. This does not mean that the teacher becomes of less use in the higher classes, but that his use is of a different kind. It has been said by a cynical Frenchman that a cat does not caress us, but only caresses itself against us. In the same way, the really good pupil educates himself against his teacher. In other words, he uses the teacher as a means to aid in educating himself. At the early stages the teacher directs the whole of the activities of the pupil, at the final stage the pupil should direct his own activities, and use the teacher as a means of using these activities to the best advantage. The duty of the teacher is clear. Thackeray tells us somewhere that the secret of wooing is to make oneself indispensable to one's mistress. The teacher's duty as educator is exactly the opposite. His aim should be to make himself dispensable. No doubt, as teacher, he may still be of the greatest possible service, but as educator he has succeeded only when his occupation is gone.

You who read this book are by that very fact proved to be at least well on the way to becoming your own educator. The book, to be sure, may have been put into your hands by some one else, who, to that extent, is your educator. But on the other hand, so far as you are interested in finding out what the book has to say that will help you to manage your studies better, you are your own educator and are using the book as an instrument. You will notice a certain parallelism between the child coming to a knowledge of the difference between the subjective and objective selves, and the pupil's coming to take a part in his own education. In both cases there is a turning back of the mind upon itself, a considering of the whole position of our relation to others, and of our possibilities. When the educand becomes his own educator, it is really a case of the subjective self taking the objective self in hand and determining to make of it something that it was not before. This implies some sort of notion of the aim of education. It has to be remembered that the aim of the State in education may be one thing and the aim of the individual another. No doubt, looking at the matter from the loftiest standpoint the two aims will be found to coincide. But in the meantime you who read this book are primarily interested in your own education. You want to make the best use of your opportunities, in the legitimate desire to make of yourselves the best of which you are capable.

This aim is very widely recognized to be the highest aim of education, and it is usually represented by the word self-realization. It is generally admitted that the educator's object is to secure the self-realization of the pupil. Some young people prefer another form of this ideal, represented by the term self-expression. Occasionally the two terms are used as if they were synonymous, but when they are distinguished from one another, as they ought to be, the higher ideal of the two is certainly self-realization. If they are to be marked off from one another, self-expression would seem to imply that there is a self already in existence, a ready-made self, whose only need is for expression. This ideal demands, above everything, that the self should be free from restraint. The demand of those who hold this ideal is that they should be free to lead their own life, to express what is in them, to be their true selves. So far as it is opposed to hypocrisy, and favours the honest expression of our whole nature, the ideal is all right. But everything depends upon the kind of self that is being expressed. The theory takes it for granted that this self is worthy of expression.

The self-realization theory, on the other hand, implies that education is to be a process in which the possibilities of the self are to be developed. But these possibilities are for evil as well as for good. The purpose of education must be to foster the good potentialities of the self, and to stunt the evil. It may be said that to do this is to cramp the freedom of the individual soul, and it is the perception of this danger that gives to the self-expression view its power over the public mind. But those who favour self-realization do not propose to impose upon the self from without something entirely foreign to its nature. All that is proposed is to make of the self the best of which it is capable, by developing and fostering those qualities in it that make for good, while repressing those that make for evil.

But whatever may be said about the restrictive tendency of the self-realization theory as exemplified in the ordinary education by an external teacher, there can be no objections on this score in the case of those who are seeking to educate themselves. Obviously the very fact that the self has become its own educator is a proclamation of the fact that the self is having perfect freedom in directing its own development. Yet this very introduction of the notion of freedom calls up a point of contrast between the self-realization and the self-expression ideals. Self-expression is always emphasizing its demands for perfect freedom. There must be no restraint. The self must be left perfectly free to act according to its own dictates. But the self-realization view accepts limitations. In order that our highest ideals may be reached, it is often necessary to submit ourselves to many restraints. The highest freedom is gained by subordinating ourselves voluntarily to what we regard as wholesome restrictions. All the religious paradoxes, such as "in Thy service we find perfect freedom," are based upon a recognition of this need for voluntary subordination of our natural desires.

With all this talk of self, there is a certain danger. When the distinction between the subjective and the objective self dawns upon the child, he is interested, but he seldom talks about it. His discovery affects his attitude towards life, but not always as the result of a deliberately thought-out plan. At a later stage it is certainly desirable that the educand should consider what is going on within his soul. Self-examination is necessary to intelligent living, to say nothing of education. But there is the danger of living too much within ourselves. To be conscious of our self, to know how we stand in relation to other selves and to the outer world is of the utmost value to us. Indeed, "coming to self-consciousness" is the technical expression used by certain philosophers to mean the highest point to which human thought can attain. Yet the very expression "self-consciousness" is sometimes used to indicate a quite unwholesome state of mind. A person who in a drawing-room is said to be self-conscious is one who thinks too much about himself and about what other people think of him. It is self-consciousness carried to excess and amounts to a disease. The introduction of consciousness into certain of our ordinary acts is often accompanied by a loss of power to do them as well as usual. Running down a long flight of steps is an easy matter if we think nothing about it, but if on the way we begin to consider what we are doing, we suddenly find ourselves in difficulties, and are quite apt to stumble. We often say that we cannot do certain things when there are a great many people looking on. The things are easy enough in themselves, and when we are by ourselves we do them without thinking much about them. But when we are aware that we are being watched we begin to think about how we are doing our work, and confusion follows.

If the introduction of consciousness into a process has this disturbing effect, it would appear that it is something to be avoided. Indeed, a distinguished French psychologist, Gustave Le Bon, adopts as the motto of a book called The Psychology of Education the words, "Education consists in causing the conscious to pass into the unconscious." Obviously this cannot mean that to be unconscious is prefer- able to being conscious. Consciousness in itself is essential if we are to claim the rank of human beings at all. The trouble is that it is sometimes wrongly distributed. Misplaced consciousness is a thing to be carefully avoided. The place of consciousness is in dealing with fresh things, or with things that have an immediate interest for us at any particular moment. When we are learning any new thing we must be conscious of it. We are painfully aware of every motion we make, for example, in learning to ride a bicycle. But as we go on and acquire skill we cease to notice each individual action, and confine ourselves to the general feeling resulting from balancing ourselves. All our actions are controlled by the brain. Now the brain, in a general way, may be regarded as made up of two parts, an upper and a lower. Speaking still in a very general way, it may be said that the upper brain is the seat of consciousness, while the lower brain has the control of our activities that are carried on out of consciousness. When we are learning to do anything we may be said to depend on our upper brain; when we have acquired such skill that we do not need to think about the details of what we are doing, we may be said to work with our lower brain. Thus it is not unreasonable to say that we run up and down stairs under the direction of the lower brain without calling in the upper brain at all. Everything we can do without consideration falls into the lower brain's department. Thus we do most of our spell- ing with the lower brain. It is only when a difficulty arises that the upper brain is called in for a consultation.

You are not to take all this physiology too literally. In one sense it is true that the brain always acts as a whole, yet it is sufficiently true for our purpose to accept the position that the upper brain is in the position of the head of a great commercial firm who sits in his office and directs all the new and important parts of the business, and leaves all the routine to be carried on by his subordinates. He may be said to be unconscious of all that is going on in the different departments, and yet from his place at the top he is the guiding influence that keeps everything going. If anything goes wrong anywhere in the business the head, if he is efficient, at once becomes aware of it and gives it his attention. In the same way the upper brain attends to all the new and difficult mental and physical processes, and relegates to the lower brain the looking after all the ordinary or routine parts of our living. If anything goes wrong anywhere, however, the upper brain is at once aware of it, and takes things in hand till it is safe to turn them over again to the routine-controlling lower brain.

Real living, living as opposed to mere existence, has been said to be the application of old principles to new cases. It is in the upper brain that we carry on our real living. When we are educating ourselves we keep on passing things from the upper brain down to the lower. The more things that we can leave to the lower brain the better. What is wanted is that the upper brain should be left to attend to the really new and important things. Were it not for this power of passing on things to the lower brain it would be impossible to make any intellectual progress. We would be all the time occupied with thinking out every individual action that our daily life demands. As it is, the great bulk of our living is carried on in the lower-brain department. The upper brain is busy all the time dealing with new matter, selecting what is useful, rejecting what is hurtful, and passing on the useful to the care of the lower brain. Once an activity has been passed into the lower-brain department it always implies waste if it is called back into the upper-brain or consciousness department, unless something has gone wrong. or unless for a definite reason the upper brain wants to examine the activity in relation to something else.

Consciousness is always being turned in some direction or other. The danger is that it may be too frequently turned back upon itself. Self-examination is necessary, and no really good work can be done unless we keep ourselves well informed about ourselves. But there is danger in keeping ourselves too much under our own searchlight. Too little introspection, as this process of self-examination is called, results in a dull and unintelligent personality. But too much attention to the self leads to the morbid state that we have seen is known as self-consciousness. This peculiarly unpleasant state amounts to a vice, but it has to be remembered that it is an intellectual vice, rather than a moral one. The more aggressive form known as selfishness is marked by as keen a sense of the self, but in a different connexion. The selfish person is saved from excessive attention to the self by the need to concentrate upon the things that he wants to get in the interests of that self. He is not so much concerned about what he is, or what people think he is, as about what he can get for himself.

Intellectual selfishness comes as a state intermediate between self-consciousness and ordinary selfishness. It may be called self-reference, and can be observed easily in almost any conversation. We are all very much inclined to respond to every remark made to us, by a mere statement of how the thing affects us. Instead of carrying on the train of thought suggested by the remark of our friend, we are apt to tell him the train of thought his words have suggested to us. Our friend talks about his things and we talk about ours. The conversation falls into two more or less independent parts. There is a story about an old Irishwoman of a happy turn of mind who admitted that she had only two teeth in her head, but added "Thank God, they meet!" Too many of the conversations one hears in ordinary life consist of two parts that do not meet. One man says: "Had it not been for the dogged perseverance of Smith, the boat would never have been brought to land." His friend replies: "Talking of dogs, my neighbour has some young puppies that make my life miserable with their yelpings." This crude form of self-reference is not very difficult to avoid, if only we have an average amount of good feeling. But the deeper form of morbid self-consciousness is not so easy to escape.

It is indeed the besetting sin of the man who takes his own education in hand. It is so right and necessary that he should take stock of himself regularly, that he is very apt to slide into the vice without being aware of it. Yet the results of really honest self-examination are often so disillusioning as to give little encouragement to excessive self-esteem. In any case, it is obviously necessary for you to get as good a knowledge of your own powers as possible, if you are going to take up seriously the task of self-realization. In order to make of yourself the best of which your self is capable you must find out all you can about the nature of that self. One of the Seven Wise Men of Greece justified his place among the seven by a saying that is one of the most quoted of the multitude of saws that have come down to us from those old times. When Solon proclaimed his famous "Know thyself," he gave a piece of advice that is always sound, but is of special value to the young, since they are in a position to apply the knowledge of themselves that they may acquire. When the proverb tells us that man is either a fool or a physician at forty, it implies that mere experience by that age ought to have given us such a knowledge of our physical constitution as will enable us to regulate it wisely. But if the knowledge could have been acquired in the teens it would have enabled us to make applications that might have prevented evils instead of merely enabling us to do something to remedy them. In order to know ourselves it is necessary to carry on deliberately the sort of vague and unsystematic examination of ourselves that we saw took place when the subjective self set about investigating the objective self.

No harm comes from an examination of our physical powers such as we make when we consider whether we should go in for this or that form of game. We have to find what sort of "wind" we have got, how far we can trust our eye in estimating distances and speeds, whether our hand responds easily and rapidly to the suggestions conveyed by the eye. Similarly in matters of study it need have no evil results when we set about testing our native powers in order that we may be able to adopt an intelligent line of action in planning out and executing our schemes of self-realization.

In order that you may have some sort of guidance in the personal stocktaking that is essential to a proper appraisement of your power as a student, I fall back on a book called The Schoolmaster. It was published in 1570, its author being Roger Ascham, a famous Elizabethan teacher who was concerned in the education of Lady Jane Grey and of Elizabeth herself. In his book he considers the qualities that are necessary to success as a student, and in his turn he falls back upon what Plato says in his great work known as The Republic. In the seventh book of The Republic Plato uses seven words that ought to be applicable to every one who is selected for the highest training. Ascham takes these seven words and explains what they demand from the student. I reproduce them here so that you may see how far you meet the requirements of this exacting old schoolmaster.

Εὐφυής (Euphues): "Is he that is apt by goodness of wit and appliable by readiness of will to learning." Ascham goes on to demand under this head a sweet and strong voice, a comely face, goodly stature and a commanding presence.

Μνήμων (Mnemon): "Good of memory, a special part of the first note, Euphues, and a mere benefit of nature, yet it is so necessary for learning … as without it all other gifts of nature do small service to learning."

Φιλομαθής (Philomathes): "Given to learning; for though a child have all the gifts of nature at wish, and perfection of memory at will, yet if he have not a special love to learning, he shall never attain to much learning."

Φιλόπονος (Philoponos): "Is he that hath a lust to labour and a will to take pains. For if a child have all the benefits of nature, with perfection of memory, love, like and praise learning never so much, yet if he be not of himself painful, he shall never attain unto it."

Φιλήκοος (Philekoos): "He that is glad to hear and learn of another. For otherwise he shall stick with great trouble, where he might go easily forward; and also catch hardly a very little by his own toil, when he might gather quickly a good deal by another man's teaching."

Ζητητικός (Zetetikos): "He that is naturally bold to ask any question, desirous to search out any doubt, not ashamed to learn of the meanest, not afraid to go to the greatest, until he be perfectly taught and fully satisfied."

Φιλέπαινος (Philepainos): "He that loveth to be praised for well-doing at his father or master's hand. A child of this nature will earnestly love learning, gladly labour for learning, willingly learn of other, boldly ask any doubt."

Quintilian, in his book on Oratory also gives a few of the points that are essential to success in study. He puts in the forefront memory and imitation, but he also lays great stress on the last quality that Ascham mentions, love of praise. "Give me," says Quintilian, "the boy whom praise stimulates, whom honour delights, who weeps when he is unsuccessful. His powers must be cultivated under the influence of ambition; reproach will sting him to the quick; honour will incite him; and in such a boy I shall never be apprehensive of indifference."

Quintilian is a little doubtful about boys who learn easily at the beginning. Ile thinks they are inclined to be impudent, and incidentally he shows that he is not so keen on "zetetikos" as is Ascham. Still, the English schoolmaster too has his doubts about the quick learner. He goes out of his way to distinguish between what he calls hard wits and quick wits, and it is not difficult to see that he has a bias in favour of the hard kind. This is how he describes them: